Thereon I stepped between them, and, touching my jeweled belt, said: “Fair Sir, I think the youth has had no less than his deserts, and as for the Voewood crows they like Norman carrion even better than Saxon flesh.”
The soldier frowned, as well as he might, at my retort, but before we could draw, as assuredly we would have done, the monk pushed in between us, and the athelings of the commission, who had orders to carry out their work with peace and despatch as long as that were possible, quieted their unruly rabble, and presently a muttering, surly order was restored between the glowering crowds.
“Now,” said the scribe propitiatingly, anxious to get through with his task, “you have heard how amiably Sewin answered. Of you I will ask a question or two in Saxon, since, likely enough, you do not know the blessed Latin.” (By the soul of Hengist, though, I knew it before the stones of that confessor’s ancient monastery were hewn from their native rock!) “Answer truly, and all shall be well with you. First, then, how much land hast thou?”
But I could not stand it. My spleen was roused against these braggart bullies, and, throwing discretion to the wind, I burst out, “Just so much as serves to keep me and mine in summer and winter!”
“And how many plows?”
“So many as need to till our cornlands.”
“Rude boar!” said the monk, backing off into the group of his friends, and frowning from that vantage in his turn. “How many serfs acknowledge your surly leadership?”
“Just so many,” I said, boiling over, “as can work the plows and reap the corn, and keep the land from greedy foreign clutches! There, put up your scroll and begone. I will not answer you! I will not say how many pigeons there are in our dovecotes—how many fowls roost upon their perches—how many earthen pots we have, or how many maids to scrub them! Get you back to the Conqueror: tell him I deride and laugh at him for the second time. Say I have lived a longish life, and never yet saw the light of that day when I profited by humility. Say I, the swart stranger who stabbed his ruffian courtier and galloped away with the white maid, Editha of Voewood—I, who plucked that flower from the very saddle-bow of his favorite, and thundered derisive through his first camp there on the eastern downs—say, even I will find a way to keep and wear her, in scorn of all that he can do! Out with you—begone!”
And they went, for I was clearly in no mood to be dallied with, while behind me the serfs and vassals were now mustering strongly, an angry array armed with such weapons as they could snatch up in their haste, and wanting but a word or look to fall upon the little band of assessors and slay them as they stood. Thus we won that hour—and many a long day had we to regret the victory.
My luck was against me that time. I hoped, so far as there was any hope or reason in my thoughtless anger, to have had a space to rouse the neighboring thanes and their vassals upon these our tyrants, and I had dreamed, so combustible was the country just then, somehow perhaps the flame would have spread far and wide. I saw that abominable thing, Rebellion, for once linked hand in hand with her sweet rival, Patriotism, I saw the red flames of vengeance in the quarrel I had made my own sweeping through the land and lapping up with its hundred tongues every evidence of the spoilers! Yes! and even I had fancied that, as there were no true Saxon Princes for our English throne, there was still Editha, my wife; and if there were no swords left to fence a throne so filled, yet there was the sword of Phra the Phœnician! Vain fantasy! The faces of the Fates were averted.